


Something and Nothing

by Innocent Culprit (JoJo)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Series, Sam 10), Weechesters (Dean 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/Innocent%20Culprit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean doesn't know which he is</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something and Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> first posted to Supernaturalville April 2008

In the middle of June '93, John Winchester came home from eight days away and found one lamp burning in the window and four cold beers in the fridge.

The lamp meant all was well. The beers meant he was expected.

John opened one bottle of beer, took a slug, and then went to look at his sons sleeping. Sam, back curled against his brother's upper arm, would have been the one who remembered the beers even if he hadn't fetched them. Most of his face was obscured by an ever-lengthening curtain of dark hair. John moved a little of it back with two fingers and felt muscles in his stiff, exhausted face twitch at the sight of the composed, sleep-flushed face underneath.

Dean, trying to crawl bodily into the mattress, was on his front, the arm next to Sam twisted uncomfortably, the other arm hooked under the pillow. He would have been the one who made sure the lamp was lit. He seemed to have gotten a buzzcut some time over the last seven days and John restrained himself from running a hand across the short fuzz.

He went back next door, turned off the lamp and sat on the couch with the four beers in the flickering light of the little TV on the kitchen counter. The boys found him there asleep, TV still humming, when they got up next morning.

There was no big welcome home, just a seamless move into a new day as if it was the most normal thing in the world for them to spend the greater portion of life home alone and for their parent to disappear and re-appear at random. Dean, barefoot, in fraying denim and a faded black vest, scrambled eggs at the stove, barking orders like a junior mess sergeant, while Sam complained about being shouted at and dumped plates and cutlery down next to Dean's elbow. Soon as he could, he scooted off to eat Fruit Loops cross-legged in front of the TV and John put his feet on the coffee table and prepared to be waited on.

"Let's all go see Henry," he said after accepting a plate of eggs from his elder son with a nod of approval and the light of a smile in his eyes that never quite made it to his mouth. He had already made it clear that he wasn't going to tell them where he'd been, what he'd been doing and why he was a day late in getting back.

Dean's face showed he was suspicious of this suggestion. Sam swivelled his head briefly at Henry's name, exchanged a look with his brother, and turned back to the TV.

Henry Morgan, who they had never met, was an old marine buddy of their Dad's who'd written a book about Browning firearms, and who now lived mysteriously in the Catskills in a cabin with no electric light. That was about all Dean and Sam knew. Round about this time of the year, when he was at the end of his rope with single parenting in absentia and having no good answer to all the letters from school, John usually went alone to visit Henry and left the boys with Pastor Jim.

"It won't be a hunting trip," he went on, and of course they reacted, Sam with enthusiasm, Dean with time-honored cussedness. "Well, not the usual kind."

"Why the hell we going then?" Dean had asked, so dripping with fourteen year-old attitude that it hurt.

"To see Henry."

"It's not a vacation is it?"

"You don't want a vacation?"

Dean's eyes rolled because it wasn't even worth replying.

"Why not, Dean?" Sam asked. "Why dontcha want a vacation?"

The pain of other people's stupidity furrowed Dean's brow.

"What's the point?"

"To do fun stuff," Sam told him, not looking away from the screen.

"You're gonna miss school," Dean said.

"You're gonna," Sam responded at once, twizzling round from cross-legged to his belly, the spoon jangling in the bowl.

"Yes, Sammy, you'll miss a bit of school, but we can take your assignments with us," Dad had said. Sam's eyes left the screen momentarily and looked at him and then at Dean again. The idea of missing school was a serious thing, one he could not ignore. One he had to weigh up in his ten-year-old brain as he watched cartoons. One he could only weigh up when he had seen what Dean felt about it.

"You're gonna," Sam had said to Dean again when he had thought for a second and turned back again.

Sam, of course, knew what they all knew, that Dean was only a whisker away from being asked to leave anyway. His attendance was woeful and the days he managed to stay in the right place at the right time he disrupted. This school, or this age, had tipped him over the edge of tolerance for lessons and teachers and conforming. His head was with Dad, not with 8th grade, 9th grade or any other grade they wanted him to be in, although John had not quite admitted it to himself. To Sam, such an upcoming disgrace as the exclusion of his brother from class was a source of both dread and anticipation. He didn't want the shame, but he kinda wanted to see Dean on the day formal education finally gave up on him. Just to see the show.

"Doesn't Henry have a dog?" Dean asked then and John smiled properly. It amused him that his eldest was nervous about the idea of dogs. Not the dogs themselves, generally. More about the idea of them.

"Sure does. Trained tracker and best early-warning system I ever saw."

"OK," Dean said, patronizing in that way only teenagers can bring off.

"Can we go to the city, Dad?" Sam rolled on to his back and slung his hands behind his head.

"The city, Sammy? You mean New York City?"

Dean tutted. "New York City's not in the mountains, idiot-boy."

"Duh, Dean, It's less than a hundred miles," Sam said. "You're dumb if you don't know that."

Dean's eyes flicked around for a missile and his hand closed on a wooden spoon but John warned him with just a look. He couldn't put up with stuff being thrown in a confined space.

"Can we, Dad?"

"I don't know yet, Sam. We'll see."

*

They left mid-morning and the station wagon was hot as a furnace. Dean loafed in the back with his earphones on and Sam rode shotgun.

Dean didn't mind Henry's cabin in the Catskills, but got frustrated with not getting so much as a sniff of the fabled Browning collection, or, indeed, any other weapon. Dad and Henry talked and drank without him. Sam played with Juno the dog and read books on the swing. They both swam in the freezing lake water. Dean chopped wood for the stove and wished he had a beard and a Bowie knife as cool as Henry's.

"Tomorrow," John said after three nights, "We're going to go get a train to the city."

"That," said Sam finding, and using, Dean's arm as a punchbag to express his fervent glee, "is awesome."

"Crap," Dean complained and got a slap on the back of his head. He wasn't quite sure if it came from Dad or Henry.

He hated the next day.

Hated sitting on the train. Hated the cavernous world of Grand Central and the clogged streets in the summer fug, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people all around him, every one of whom seemed strange and possibly dangerous. Hated and feared riding the subway. Was paralysed on the top of the Empire State.

Sam, though, was in all seven heavens at once.

"I'm disappointed in you, Dean," John said. "I thought you'd make something of it."

"Make something of it?" thought Dean, back to the wall, vaguely watching Sam prancing around at the wire, while a wild sky and acres of building swam around in the background.

"Hey, Dean, look ... come closer." Sam had hold of Dean's sleeve and was tugging it, away from the wall. Dean pulled back.

"Nah, ‘s'ok, I can see from here."

"Deeeean, don't be such a loser. Come on. You can't see."

Dean let himself be pulled. He let himself be carried forward to the wire where Sam squeezed them both tight against it, his finger poking through, pointing, his hair flapping wildly in the breeze. Dean wished for the solid ground of 34th Street below, but he let himself be pulled, because Sam wanted to share.

"Yeah that's great, Sammy, really great, now let go of my arm."

Sam let Dean pull away. He let him back himself into the steps leading to the shop. He wished Dean would walk all around with him, race him to see who could get to each corner first, but he let Dean go back because Dean wanted something solid.

"OK, boys," John said, appearing suddenly like he always seemed to do. "I said one more thing after this. What's it to be?"

"Museum of Natural History," Sam said doing a solo dance of pleasure, jabbing Dean in the ribs with his elbow. "Yeah, a museum, Dean, let's go to a mu-zee-um. You know you loooove mu-zee-ums."

"You little geek," Dean said, flicking his ear with a finger.

"Big fat loser," Sam replied.

"That'll make two scores for Sammy," John said. He closed a hand around the back of Dean's neck under the short hairline. "So what about you, son, what do you want to do in one of the great cities of the world?" He knew scrupulous parity was vital.

Dean, his boy, guardian of all his hopes, tensed and shrugged away from the touch. ‘Twas ever thus, John reflected. Attached by invisible suckers to Mom, Dean had edged past the age of four and thenceforth could only deal it out, never take it. And the fourteen thing didn't help.

"Well, Dean? There must be something you want to do."

If he wasn't back in the scuzzy apartment thinking of ways to avoid school and waiting for Dad to let him come hunting again, Dean would have been fine chopping wood outside Henry Morgan's cabin. The axe was keen. He liked the way it glinted as it swung through the air, the sound it made as the wood split, he liked to hit logs in exactly the place he was aiming. He liked keeping Henry's stove going because, although not one of them said anything, he knew it made him the most important person in the cabin. Dean didn't even need to be appreciated for it. He just needed to feel there was a point to him being there.

"'seum's fine, sir," he said eventually.

It was barely fine.

Sam, hands in pockets, wandered the halls reading the display information much faster than Dean could, embellishing it with all kinds of bizarre factoids, eyes popping with renewed interest every five minutes. He had energy, too, limitless supplies of it, and when John disappeared to make some calls Dean had to trail him, from exhibit to exhibit, and his eyes got tired watching.

Dean looked at the stuff and thought that if it wasn't actually there alive, and doing something interesting, or squaring up to you so you maybe had to kill it, then it was a waste of time. He felt the chill, too, of people passing through him as they walked. Two or three times, maybe, that icy claw clenching on his gut. There had been even more at Grand Central, but here it felt like they were the same few following him around. He watched Dad to see if he felt the same chill, but he didn't seem to. John was pre-occupied, somehow, although he did laugh, once, a soft rumble to see Sam elbowing his way to the front of a knot of other kids to get to see the scariest, most dangerous monster of all.

"Out of his depth," Dean heard Dad saying to Henry Morgan when they were back at the cabin. "Didn't know what to do with him ... damn, Henry, I've raised a one-dimensional kid."

Dean lay on his back on the lumpy mattress and listened. Sammy was sleeping silently next to him, one big toe in contact with his older brother's shin. He'd been wasted by the brainpower he'd been using all day and had drooled on Dean's shoulder in the train while Dean stared out through the window into the flashing dark night and his headphones fed him Motorhead on a loop. They'd eaten near the train station before heading back up here and John and Henry had rousted out the Jim Beam before the door was hardly closed. They'd been hitting it pretty hard, too. Dean could hardly credit the stupidity of adults ... necking bourbon and flapping their mouths off as if no-one would be able to hear.

 _I'm right next door, Dad. I got ears. Two of ‘em._

"He's fourteen, John."

 _Here it comes..._

"Sam's only ten and he already knows he can do things, go places, be something. Dean ...jeez, he's scared of the world."

"John," came Henry's voice, clear and calm in the night air, "Dean's the bravest kid on the planet."

"Doesn't mean he's not scared."

"Cut him some slack why don't you."

"Too dangerous."

"Damnit, John Winchester... you've made the boy what you wanted, taken away anything else he mighta been. You can't turn round and bitch about it now."

Dean lifted his head off the pillow to hear a reaction to that but the voices were suddenly muffled. It was about typical. The only times you ever got away with listening to people talking about you they'd never have a good word to say.

Except that neighbor in Lawrence.

 _Your boy, Mary... he's a doll, a real sweetheart._

And then Mom had said something - damn if he could remember what - and whisked him inside.

Dean yawned in the dark.

It should matter. All that anything-else-he-mighta-been shit. Dean guessed that it should really matter to him.

So Sam was the brightest and the best. Dean knew that already. Little runt. Taking up all the bed.

So he can be something and I'll be nothing.

That was a bit harder to take. Dad hasn't actually said the n-word, but Dean thought he could probably fill it in where it was needed.

He would have been the first person to admit that he didn't know much to do with schools and museums and factoids, and that what he did know about no-one else wanted to know about.

But Dean Winchester knew one thing, and he knew it under his skin. He'd been born to protect his little brother, and not even in a big-brotherly kind of way. The more his weird and twisted life went on, the more he realized that it was actually in a save-the-goddamned-world kind of a way.

Which, patting down the pillow and leaving Dad to his Bourbon, he figured was maybe something.

-ends-


End file.
